All three branches of government in Montenegro are currently acting.
Although after the change of government in 2020, one of the first promises was the adoption of laws on the Government and the Assembly, we are waiting for another election without umbrella acts that would regulate the work of ministers and deputies.
And while the executive authorities claim that they have completed the draft of the Law on the Government, but that its adoption has been stopped until the election of a new Government, they admit in the parliament that there was no will to even come to the draft of the Law on the Assembly.
More than half a year ago, representatives of the executive and legislative authorities triumphantly announced that their work would finally be regulated by umbrella laws.
Today, in anticipation of the election of the new convocations of the Government and the Assembly, Prime Minister Dritan Abazović's office explains why there has been no move away from the draft Law on the Government since this summer.
"The fact is that after the vote of no confidence in the Government, there was a bit of a standstill," said Ivo Šoć, advisor to the Prime Minister.
Milosava Paunović, the president of the parliamentary working group for drafting the Law on the Parliament, explained to Television Vijesti why this act is not even in the draft.
"The law on the Assembly was not prepared because the circumstances were such that we only had two months to draft it, and there was no will to finish the work. I am of the opinion that we must wait for more stable political conditions to pass the law," said Paunović.
Biljana Papović from the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT), who was a member of the Working Group for drafting the Law on the Government, says that the intention was to pass these two laws at the same time, but that the working bodies were delayed.
If these laws existed, it would be known what the Government could and could not do in its technical mandate, and what the powers of the dissolved Assembly were.
Šoć, however, claims that the issue of the technical Government could not be defined by law because the Constitution does not recognize it.
However, CDT connects the failure to adopt the law with a lack of political will, supporting it with an example.
"We saw at the very session of the Government, when this text was discussed, that the members of the Government were much more bothered that they did not find their future position in certain departments, than that they were dealing with some concrete improvements. We do not see that the practices that have changed they very actively criticized during the technical mandate of the previous government," said Papović.
Without a full mandate in Montenegro, and facing another election, for the first time all three branches of government, executive, legislative and judicial, of which only the judiciary is regulated by law.
And while the Principality of Montenegro had the Law on Government as early as 1902, the modern state 121 years later did not legally regulate the work of ministers and deputies.
This election race will also pass, and the question is when the new convocations will do it.
Bonus video:
